Uffe Christoffersen
The Glow of the Tiger. New works. 17th May – 7th Oktober 2007

”Put a tiger in your tank” was a famous slogan a few decades ago, and that is exactly the type of fuel the painter Uffe Christoffersen fills us up with.
Throughout a generation, tigers en masse have poured out of his studio, roaring and purring, in play, rest and coupling. Always in strong colours and in a violent performance, which borrows from the painting of the Cobra group. In the last few years, Uffe Christoffersen has begun to retell the old fables, now with the tiger as the main character – tiger fables.

“The tiger painter’s” business is not merely the animal itself. Its ferocity is not only the wellspring for a strong artistic expression, but the tiger itself is also an image of the inspiration that must be tamed so that art can result from it.

Apart from the tiger, Uffe Christoffersen’s passion is ochre, the ferrous earth colour. It has interested him his whole life through, and is to be found in great pits near his home in the South of France.
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For several years, he has worked to get the glow of the ochre under the strong sun into his pictures, even though he has to paint with other colours.

The tigers must have the same glow as the experience from nature – for us to be able to make a tiger’s leap into the realm of liberty and joy.

The exhibition at Nivaagaard’s Art Gallery shows completely new paintings from the artist’s hand, ’pure’ tiger pictures as well as tiger fables, all contained in main colour groups, light ochre, ochre, red ochre, natural umber, caput mortuum and black and white, so that each group of works reflects the individual colour and the way it is experienced in the strong sun of the South of France – which thus is made to shine on the Art Gallery at Nivaagaard.
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A catalogue is published for the exhibition with text by the museum director, Nils Ohrt and a pictorial page designed by Uffe Christoffersen arranged according to an ‘ochre experience’.